We passed crumbling walls and decrepit shops.
“You break it,” Colin Powell had warned Bush, in what’s become known as the Pottery Barn Anecdote, “you’ll own it …”
Bedraggled families sifted giant tumuli of rubbish.
“You’ll be the proud owner of twenty-five million people …”
Lines of streetlamps, most leaning over, some fallen.
“All their hopes, aspirations, problems. You’ll own it all.”
We passed a buckled crash barrier by a small crater: the site of an IED attack. We hit an official checkpoint manned by the Iraqi police that cost us forty minutes. Official police shouldn’t hassle a foreign journalist but we were all relieved that they didn’t seem to notice my foreignness. Nasser’s car is in a bad way even by Iraqi standards, but its shiteness acts as professional camouflage. What self-respecting journo, agent, or jihadist would travel in such a pile of crap?
The further west we drove, the riskier our venture became. Nasser’s local knowledge grew scantier, and both the Abu Ghraib Highway and the N10 would be littered with dozens of roadside IEDs. The obvious targets for these were the U.S. military convoys, but knowing that any dead dog or cardboard box or bin-bag of crap might conceal enough explosives to roast a Humvee put you on permanent edge. Then there was the danger of kidnapping. My darkish complexion, beard, brown eyes, and local attire let me pass as a pale Iraqi at first glance, but my basic Arabic betrays me as a foreigner within a few words. I had my fake Bosnian passport to explain my poor language skills while claiming a Muslim affinity, but subterfuge is a high-risk game, and if a mob could be calmly reasoned with, it wouldn’t be a mob. Bosnians aren’t obvious kidnappees for ransom bounty, but neither were Japanese NGO workers until a fortnight ago. If my press pass was found, my value would go up; I’d be sold as a spy to an Al Qaeda affiliate, and they’re less interested in money than in a recorded “confession” and a beheading for the webcam. Midway between Baghdad and Fallujah we reached the town of Abu Ghraib, famous for decaying factories, palm dates, and a vast prison complex where Saddam’s enemies, or potential enemies, used to be tortured in submedieval conditions. Big Mac hears rumors that not a lot has changed under the CPA. We passed its high, kilometer-long fortified wall on the left and Nasser translated a slogan daubed on a bombed-out building facing it: We will knock on the gates of Heaven with American skulls. That was a killer opening or closing line for an article. I jotted it down in my notebook.
In front of a mosque, Nasser pulled over to give plenty of space to a U.S. convoy joining the highway. Aziz took a few pictures from inside the car, but didn’t dare get out; to a jumpy gunner, a telephoto lens looks like an RPG launcher. I counted twenty-five vehicles in the Fallujah-bound convoy, and wondered if Big Mac was sweating his butt off in any of the Humvees. Then Aziz said something in Arabic and Nasser told me, “Ed, trouble!” Half a dozen men were walking towards us from a row of low buildings alongside the mosque.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Nasser turned the ignition.
Nothing.
Nasser turned the ignition.
Nothing.
Three seconds to decide whether to bluff it, or hide …
I slid down under the milk cartons, a few seconds before a man exchanged greetings with Nasser through the driver’s window. The man asked us where we were going. Nasser said he and his cousin were taking supplies to Fallujah. Then the man asked Nasser, “Are you a Sunni or a Shi’a?”
A dangerous question; preinvasion, I seldom heard it.
Nasser replied, “While Fallujah burns, we are all Iraqis.”
Like I said, Nasser’s good. The voice asked for a cigarette.
After another pause, the man asked what supplies we had.
“Baby milk,” said Aziz. “For the hospitals.” Nasser said how his imam told them the American pigs were throwing baby milk into the sewers, to stop Iraqi babies growing up to become jihadists.
“We have hungry babies here, too,” said the man.
Neither Aziz nor Nasser had an answer to hand.
“I said,” repeated the man, “we have hungry babies too.”
If the car was unloaded, I’d be found, a foreigner, within spitting distance of Iraq’s Ground Zero of Incarceration. By hiding, I’d already put my Bosnian Muslim journalist story beyond use. Nasser sounded cheerful. They’d be happy to donate a box of baby powder to the babies of Abu Ghraib. Then, innocently, he asked for a favor in return. His damn car wouldn’t start, and he needed a push.
I couldn’t catch the man’s reply. When the Corolla’s door opened, I had no way of knowing if Nasser was being ordered out at gunpoint, or if every box of baby formula was about to be removed. The seat was flipped forward and the box covering my face was lifted away …
… I saw a hairy wrist with a Chinese Rolex and the underside of the box covering my face. I waited for a shout. Then the driver’s seat flopped back, and no more boxes were taken. I heard laughter, then the car sagged under Nasser’s weight and goodbyes called out. Soon after, I felt the car being pushed along, heard the tires crunch gravel, and felt the car jolt before the engine started.
Aziz half gasped: “I thinked we dead men.”
I was lying under the boxes twisted and breathless.
Thinking, When I get back home, I’ll never leave again.
Thinking, When I get back home, I’ll never feel this alive.
“HOKEY-DOKEY, WE’LL START with the two families,” says the beagle-faced photographer in his Hawaiian shirt. It’s sunny on the church steps, and all the leaves are fresh and lime-green. They’d be microwaved brown by a single afternoon in Mesopotamia, where flora has to equip itself with armor and thorns to survive. “Webbers on the left,” says the photographer, “and Sykeses on the right, if you will.” Pauline Webber gets her family into position with martial efficiency, while the Sykeses drift into place unhurriedly. Holly looks around for Aoife, who’s scooping up drifts of confetti for a confetti fight. “Picture time, Aoife.” Aoife snuggles against Holly and neither think to look for me. So I stay where I am, out of shot. Like all belongers, the Sykeses and Webbers don’t notice how easily they slip into groups, lines, ranks, gangs. But we nonbelongers know what we are, all right. “Squeeze in both ends, if you will,” says the photographer.
“Wakey-wakey, Ed.” Kath Sykes beckons me. “You’re in on this.”
The devil suggests I answer, “Holly seems to disagree,” but I step between Kath and Ruth. Holly, below, doesn’t turn around, but Aoife, with flowers in her hair, looks back and up. “Daddy, did you see me take up the ring tray?”
“I’ve never seen a ring tray held so skillfully, Aoife.”
“Daddy, flattery will get you anywhere,” and everyone who hears laughs, so much to Aoife’s delight that she repeats the phrase.
Once I hoped that, by not getting married, me and Holly might avoid the scenes that Mum and Dad played out before Dad got sent down for his twelve years. True, me and Holly don’t shout and throw stuff, but we sort of do, invisibly.
“Hokey-dokey,” says the photographer. “All aboard?”
“Where’s Great-aunt Eilísh?” asks Amanda, Brendan’s eldest.
“Great-great-aunt Eilísh to you, technically,” notes Brendan.
“Right, Dad, whatever.” Amanda’s sixteen.
“We’re on rather a tight schedule,” declares Pauline Webber.
“She was talking to Audrey the vicar …” Amanda scoots off.
The photographer straightens up, his smile drooping. I tell my sort-of sister-in-law, “Beautiful ceremony, Sharon.”